


this is why we fight.

by skygrace



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M, vague allusions to sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-15
Updated: 2012-12-15
Packaged: 2017-11-21 04:18:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/593370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skygrace/pseuds/skygrace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>it turns out seneca crane wasn't so sentimental after all. returning to district 12 as the sole victor of the 74th hunger games, katniss must learn to deal with everything she's done.</p><p>but she doesn't have to do it alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this is why we fight.

The official story is that Peeta Mellark died of poisoning in the arena, and there is no way for anyone to know otherwise. After all, who are they to question the Capitol’s word? Three people alive know the truth: Katniss Everdeen, head Gamemaker Seneca Crane, and President Snow himself. It is a secret doomed to never be known, one that died the moment he did. 

To Katniss, it was also a message: when the Capitol says that only one can be left alive, then that’s the rule. And the Capitol always wins. 

After the Games, people congratulate her on what was surely an excellent tactic. Pretending to be in love like that, gaining his trust. Tricking him into eating the berries. _I had my bets on you all along_ , they leer, positioning themselves to be a little bit closer than what’s strictly appropriate. She’s the new media sensation. Everybody wants a piece of the Girl on Fire. 

Katniss attends party after party in the Capitol, all hosted in her honor, but she never stays. She always finds some way to escape, often retreating to the roof or some other abandoned room. Claustrophobia aside, it’s better than spending time with people who had seen Peeta’s death as nothing more than part of a particularly thrilling Hunger Games. People who will forget him once the Games come around next year. Then everything about him – the quiet power of his words, the steadiness of his hands – will be compacted in a videotape of past games, to be stored in a box somewhere. 

The train ride passes in a blur of camera flashes and cheers. The Capitol loves her, because they think she orchestrated the entire thing, and cruelty is interesting if nothing else – which explains their worship of Enobaria, at least. They call her a heartbreaker, among other things. Whatever it takes to get people to let go of their money. To Katniss, the only silver lining is that her natural sullenness doesn’t hurt the allure she’s apparently in possession of, so they let her go with minimal one-line answers at the interviews. The smiling, giggling girl in pretty dresses is completely gone. 

Eventually, things return to a semblance of normalcy, but things are never the way they used to be. The children of the Seam have full bellies for the first time in their entire lives, and for Katniss it’s almost worth everything to hear their shrieks of delight as they unwrap packages of candy. They’re too young to know what the food means and the price that was paid for it, but the adults don’t forget. It doesn’t buy their forgiveness. She was the girl who had the chance to save her district partner but betrayed him instead, or so they think.

 _It should be him here instead of you_ , their eyes tell her. Peeta was the good one, the likable one. Katniss doesn't protest this. Some days she almost agrees.

 

The woods are the only things left unchanged for her. She breathes in the reassuring scent of the early-morning dew on the grass, soaking into her shoes. Her eyes kept closed until she senses the movement of something behind her and knows it even without turning around. “Gale.” The only person who could possibly sneak up on her , especially after the Games when every sense is hyper-vigilant. “Hey, Catnip.” 

It takes seconds for her to turn and cross the space between them, crashing into him full-force. She wraps her arms around him, burying her face in the rough cotton of his shirt. Gale has never been the type to be good with words, preferring the silence of the woods to empty chatter, and it would be wrong to start now. What he does instead is ten times better – he doesn't talk at her, but wraps a protective arm around her instead.

 _Safe_ is a word Katniss no longer believes exists. But if the feeling could somehow be replicated in any form, it would be this. 

“Don’t you know what they’re calling me in the Capitol? You should stay away.” Her face is pulled into a mock frown, but the banter is the same. Morbid and inappropriate, but that’s the only choice they have. To laugh or be scared witless, and Gale chooses the former. “I’ll take my chances,” he shrugs – and in one swift sentence restores the balance between them. In his hands is a rabbit, caught in an intricate snare. “Have you eaten?”

 

Gale knew it was a mistake the first time he kissed her. It was too sudden and too unpredictable for a girl whose life has been characterized by violent change for the past couple of weeks. He knows that Katniss wants things to go back to the way they once were, but that isn't possible now. Gale has, for better or worse, irrevocably changed something between them.

“I had to do that. Just once.” He whispers before gathering his things up and leaving. Gale doesn't deny that there’s a fire that burns in him for her – and only her. Always her. Over the years he’s had his share of girls, but none of them made such a lasting impression as the Girl on Fire, looking like such a child.

But there’s a difference in what Katniss wants and what she needs, and he’s known her long enough to sense this. Gale walks directly into the town square and signs up for more shifts at the mine. He’s up to 12 now, down in the deep where he can’t breathe, where he doesn't feel quite alive. The place where his father died, along with Katniss’. 

It doesn’t matter. He’s got a family to feed. And Gale figures he’ll wait. It takes time and patience to get snares to work properly, and while he certainly isn't comparing the two, this is something that he’s used to. 

 

Predictably, their biggest argument after that is about Peeta. Katniss feels prickly and on-edge all the time now, sick of the looks she gets and the face she has to put on for the cameras. As good as she is at repressing her emotions, a breaking point has been reached and she takes a moment to be thankful that it’s here and not at home, where Prim could see. Even if Prim’s stronger and more mature than her older sister realizes sometimes, that doesn't change anything.

She sees his face every night, but it’s getting harder to remember the details of what he looked like. The kindness in his blue eyes and the burn scars on his hands from years at the ovens are the two things that anchor his image to her. Yet like her father all those years ago, the Boy with the Bread is slowly fading and for some reason the thought terrifies her. So after the initial façade has cracked, Gale asks the question that perhaps isn't the most tactful, but certainly the most pressing.

“Did you love him?”

No answer. She’s not quite sure how to answer. It hadn't been an act for Peeta, in the way it had been for her. So she answers with a question of her own with defiant eyes and arms crossed against her chest. Defensive in a way she’d never thought possible around Gale, the one person who knows her better than anybody. “Are you happy he’s dead?” is what she shoots back instead, pretending not to care about how blunt it is.

“I barely knew him. But if it came down to you or him, I'm glad it’s him.” It’s an ugly answer, but it’s also the truth. After weeks of being lied to, Katniss appreciates the bluntness of it and relents, her brows pulling together as the tenseness in her muscles dissipates. “Surviving is harder,” she states firmly, the pads of her fingers tracing over designs on her shirt, sewn by Cinna’s capable hands. 

Gale’s hand finds her shoulder. It’s weighty, but also steadying – an anchor to this reality. A physical touch that isn't violent. A rarity, by this point.

 

It’s the middle of the night when Katniss slips into his room, through the door on the other side of the house so she won’t wake Hazelle and the children. Gale’s always been a light sleeper, and he’s up and alert as soon as she steps a foot into the room but relaxes when he sees that it’s her. “I couldn't sleep,” she admits, and with those words reveals so much more. Her eyes belie the near-daily nightmares that keep her up until the sleep of the exhausted takes her – and then, only for a few hours. It’s been a lonely few weeks for the District’s second Victor and only pariah. The victory tour is coming up. Those who had forgotten will remember. “Can I just sit here for a while?”

They don’t have much in the way of furniture, so they both sit on Gale’s bed, which is more of a single mattress tucked into a corner. Gale has his own room by virtue of the fact that he has to be up before the sun and the children need their sleep. The sparseness of the room and the threadbare quality of Gale’s blankets reminds her of her old house in the Seam, which looked much like this room on the inside. They’d never had much back then, but at least then Katniss knew where her place was in the world.

Her head finds his shoulder, leaning against him. Gale’s solid against her temple and she’s always known that, but this is the first time she’s become so hyperaware of that fact. The feeling startles her and she pulls away, and in that brief interlude of silence, he kisses her.

This time she doesn't recoil.

It’s a kiss that makes her want another, and that feeling is new enough to Katniss that it makes her almost clumsy as she presses closer to him. Despite the weight of the moment, Gale pauses long enough to laugh a little bit 

“What?” It sounds so impetuous coming from her, as if he’s disturbed her pride – which is exactly what he’s done. What did he expect from her? The only other boy she’s ever kissed was Peeta, which was different. And Gale…all of the girls in her class talk about how much they want him. 

“Nothing, Catnip.” But the glare she gives him is especially fierce. “You took me by surprise.”

Katniss isn’t going to stand for that. “I'm not a prude, you know. I've – I've thought about…things.” though it’s hard for the colour to show up against her olive skin, she certainly feels the heat pooling in her cheeks. “You can’t be a murderer and a prude at the same time.” As far as Katniss sees it, there’s a reason why no one decent ever wins the Games. That level of innocence was taken the moment she let her arrows fly, and the worst thing is that the Capitol has already corrupted her and will continue to do so until she can’t stand herself. The process has already begu, and it is not reversible.

He watches, and in some way knows what she’s thinking about – but far from changing his mind, Gale takes this as the ultimate sign that she isn't ready. Because she keeps trying to prove to him that she is. So when he kisses her this time, it’s gentler than his usual. Gale’s experienced enough to know how to rein himself in. Katniss tries to kiss him harder, twisting her hands in the rough fabric of his shirt and tugging, but he stays her hands, able to clasp both of them in one of his. The first two fingers on her right hand are calloused and scarred from years of archery, paralleling his.

Instead, her head lowers and hits the pillow and his hand brushes at her waist, past hips that jut out too far and remnants of curves that hunger has stolen from her. She’s still beautiful, though. Even when streaked with blood and dirt in the arena, he hadn't thought anything less. And although it takes restraint to touch her like this without the thought of anything more, it all becomes worth it a few minutes later when a choked noise is wrung from her lips, her heart beating so fast it hurts.

This momentary loss of control displayed by the ever-composed Katniss Everdeen is something Gale ranks as one of his greatest achievements to date.

She sleeps with her head on his chest that night, and for once doesn't dream of anything.

 

A year passes and the Games come around again. Haymitch is ruled out as a mentor. His drinking is more severe than ever, and Katniss wonders if it’s because of Peeta’s death. If Haymitch and Cinna had allowed themselves to believe, even for one foolish second, that they could bring both of them home. She stops by to visit him on some days, but he’s hardly ever functioning coherently enough to talk.

The Reaping is held again. Katniss meets her tributes; the girl is a delicate beauty of fourteen, bearing the light hair and blue eyes of the merchant class. Her parents run the small candy store in town. She’s one of Prim’s friends, and she’s also never gone hungry or done any sort of physical work in her life. The boy is obviously from the Seam, but he’s already started to work in the mines. He’s tall and looks strong enough. He has a fighting chance. Sixty seconds after meeting them, she makes the conscious decision to focus most of her energies on bringing the boy back alive.

These are the choices she has to make now, and the consequences she has to live with.

The girl doesn't make it past the first hour. She’s killed in the bloodbath at the Cornucopia. Her blonde hair is stained a shocking colour of red when they lift her body by hovercraft and it reminds her of Prim’s, but they’re airing her reaction live from the control booth so she pretends not to feel a thing. Days pass, and the boy dies too, set to become yet another figure in her never-ending pantheon of nightmares.

Gale is there when she returns from the Capitol, but something’s changed. The slow smoulder of anger and discontent that has always been present in his eyes has become stronger. It threatens revolution. It threatens to set the districts alight.

Katniss knows. She’s begun to feel it too.


End file.
